Golconda Sultanate

A secretary who tamed a province

formationDrafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829)

Sultan Quli, a Turkoman said to hail from Hamadan in Persia, arrived in the Deccan while still young and joined the Bahmani sultan's own bodyguard of Turkish soldiers. His education won him a post as a government secretary, and when reports reached court that landholders in Telangana had stopped paying revenue and risen in open defiance, Sultan Quli made an unusual offer: he would go alone, without troops, and settle the matter himself. He succeeded well enough to recover several districts the local population had seized outright, and was ennobled with the title Qutb-ul-Mulk for his trouble.

Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829) · iMahesh · CC BY-SA 4.0

A rebellion joined late

When Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur and Ahmad Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar broke from Bahmani authority and began reading the Shia prayer formula in their own courts, Sultan Quli, still nominally the sultanate's own general and commander-in-chief, adopted the same religious forms himself without yet declaring outright independence. He continued sending the Bahmani king lavish annual gifts even after taking on every other trapping of sovereignty — introducing Persian court customs, the five-times-daily royal drum ceremony, and staffing his own government with countrymen from Persia. Only in 1512, once the Bahmani sultan's own incompetence and his minister's total dominance had become undeniable to everyone in the Deccan, did Sultan Quli finally cast off the last pretense of subordination.

A murder committed by a son too eager to inherit

Sultan Quli reigned for nearly thirty-three years, mostly at peace with his fellow Deccan sultans, before his own eldest son Jamshid, weary of waiting for the throne, arranged his murder. A slave sent to attend the aging king while he examined some jewels drew a hidden dagger and stabbed him through the heart; Jamshid, fearing the assassin might reveal his own involvement, killed the man on the spot to silence him. The founder who had spent decades building a kingdom out of loyal service to a dying sultanate died at the hand of the family he had built it for.

Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829) · Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0

A king disfigured

expansionDrafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (Vol. III) (1910)

Jamshid Qutb Shah, who had struck down the slave sent to murder his own father rather than let the man live to name him as its instigator, came to the Golconda throne in 1543 and soon joined Ahmadnagar's Burhan Nizam Shah in a war against Bijapur, building a fort at Kakny and laying siege to the fortress of Etgeer. His ally proved as unreliable as Jamshid himself had once been: Burhan Nizam Shah made a separate peace and proposed dividing disputed territory without consulting him, and when Bijapur's forces stormed Kakny and put its garrison to the sword, Jamshid was forced to abandon the siege and retreat, pursued the whole way by the Bijapur general Asad Khan.

A wound that could not heal

In the last of the running engagements of that retreat, Asad Khan cut Jamshid down with a sabre stroke that took off the tip of his nose, part of his cheek and his upper lip - a disfigurement that left him unable to eat or drink easily for the rest of his life. He made peace with Bijapur and turned his attention to reducing Hindu territory closer to home, but fell into a lingering illness that lasted two years and, as it worsened, curdled his temper: he had men put to death for trivial offenses until his own brothers, Haidar and Ibrahim, fled the court for Bidar out of fear for their lives. Jamshid died in early 1550, after a reign of not quite seven years, leaving an infant son on a throne two courtiers were already fighting to control.

Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (Vol. III) (1910) · Sailko · CC BY 3.0

The fall of Ramraj

expansionDrafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (Vol. III) (1910)

Jamshid's brother Ibrahim had fled the disfigured king's cruelty to Vijayanagara, where the regent Ramraj gave him an estate for his support - and where, according to Firishta, he killed two men in a sword duel provoked by a rival officer's insult over that very grant. When Jamshid died leaving an infant heir, Golconda's own courtiers squabbled openly over the boy-king until the minister Mustafa Khan wrote to Ibrahim at Vijayanagara inviting him home; by the time Ibrahim reached the frontier, six thousand horsemen had already rallied to him, and he took the throne at Golconda without opposition the day after his arrival.

An ally who never stayed allied

Ibrahim's reign became a study in switching sides. He joined Husain Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar against Bijapur in 1558, then abandoned the siege of Kulliani and decamped for home rather than let his own ally grow too powerful; he joined the combined Bijapur-Vijayanagara army against Ahmadnagar not long after, then broke camp without warning once the immediate campaign was won. He sealed a fresh alliance with Ahmadnagar in 1564 by marrying Husain Nizam Shah's own daughter, Bibi Jamali, at the siege lines outside Kulliani itself - only for Bijapur, Vijayanagara and their allies to force both bridegroom and new father-in-law into retreat within the same campaign.

A glorious campaign, and a son who paid for ambition

In 1565 Ibrahim joined the general league of Deccan sultans against Ramraj, the Vijayanagara regent whose own estate had sheltered him in exile - a coalition that killed Ramraj in battle and occupied his kingdom's territory, the campaign Firishta calls simply "glorious." The alliances that had made it possible did not survive contact with peace: within a few years Ibrahim was fleeing his own former ally Ahmadnagar after a botched attempt at secret diplomacy with Bijapur was discovered and exposed, losing a hundred and fifty elephants in the retreat. His own son Abdul Qadir, denied permission to harass the pursuing enemy, fell under suspicion of plotting to seize the throne for himself; Ibrahim had him confined and then poisoned. Ibrahim Qutb Shah died suddenly in 1581, after thirty-two years on the throne he had once fled as a young man in fear of his brother.

Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (Vol. III) (1910) · Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 3.0

A city named for a companion

peakDrafted from Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829)

Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah came to the throne in 1580 and ruled for nearly thirty-four years, presiding over Golconda at the height of its wealth and cultural patronage. His reign renewed alliances with the neighboring sultanates through marriage — a Golconda princess, his own sister, was sent to wed Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur under a treaty of perpetual friendship sealed at the fortress of Naldurg — even as the Mughal empire's presence in the Deccan grew more difficult for every sultanate in the region to ignore.

A capital moved for want of water

By 1590 Muhammad Quli judged Golconda's own fortress capital increasingly unhealthy, cramped and short of water, and resolved to build an entirely new city five miles away on the banks of the Musi river. He named the new foundation Bhagnagar, after a favored companion, and only after her death ordered it renamed Hyderabad — a change of name the population was slow to adopt, so that for years the older name persisted in common use alongside the new.

Firishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, till the Year A.D. 1612 (1829) · Lala Deen Dayal · Public domain

A patron who built a skyline

Muhammad Quli filled his new capital and its surroundings with public works on a scale the source records in careful detail: palace gardens, a grand mosque, a college, a public hospital, an almshouse dedicated to the twelve Imams, and numerous smaller mosques and baths besides. His own treasurer's accounts, examined after his death, showed nearly eighty lakh hoons spent on these public works across his reign, with a further sixty thousand hoons distributed annually to the poor — a fifth of that sum given away during the month of Muharram alone. The city he founded on the banks of the Musi would carry his name into it for centuries, long after the dynasty that built it had itself passed from power.

A death two days in the making

Muhammad Quli fell suddenly ill and died within two days, on 17 December 1611, at forty-nine years old. Rioting broke out briefly at the palace as some of his own Deccani subjects turned on the foreign courtiers who had long surrounded the king, before the city's own constable dispersed the crowd by directing their attention to the young successor's coronation instead. What followed for Golconda under that new king is not part of this account: the source's own narrative, like the reign it had just finished recording, was itself approaching its end.